Out of Your Head – The Lonely Tortoise
Final Production Principles PDF Submission
Final Film – YouTube Link (Full Size)
Thumbnail Design for YouTube using Photoshop
Initial Brainstorming
Towards the beginning of the project, we began to brainstorm various ideas for the plot that we felt we could outline within a 20 second time-frame. Below, is a photo from the planning stage of one of the more finalised ideas. Once we began roughly storyboarding that idea out (using the words: tortoise, love letter, stars, fall and ask), we realised that including a love letter in the film wouldn’t be the most efficient approach due to the short time-frame we had to deliver this story in, as ideally we’d show the viewer the letter on screen for enough time for them to read it in. This caused us to slightly simplify our idea down, through using the words: tortoise, love, stars, fall and ask.
Our new tale consisted of a lonely, old tortoise who no longer had his partner and would watch the sky sad, thinking he was the only one who was alone in this world. One night, though, he sees a lonely star fall from the sky, and rescues her. After asking her to run away together, she agrees, leading to the end.
Mood Board and Art-Style Research
In order to draw some inspiration for the art-style, we began to look at the variety of different ways different artists had interpreted tortoise and star-like characters. As the story was quite child-like, we looked at various shows and films we liked as children, engaging with the simplistic line-work in some of them, so that a clear character and style could be achieved. Once we started looking at images, we started piecing together a rough colour palette we intended to use, consisting of a lot of contrasting greens, blues and yellows.
Our eyes were particularly drawn to the style the characters in the show ‘Spongebob’ were drawn in, as we felt that the minimalistic use of lines, and focus on expression, was something we could incorporate in our film, as well as the simplicity of their plotlines.
Storyboard
Once we had decided in the direction we were going to take with the project, we continued to create a Storyboard, where we tried to play around with a variety of shot possibilities, in order to give this film a little more interest and feel.
Original Character Sketch
We then decided to divide up the next stage of the project, where I worked on the Tortoise design whilst Lilu worked on the Star design.
The initial sketch I did of the Tortoise, in my opinion, looked quite off balance and wrongly-proportioned. This led me to start editing the character once I had got into Photoshop, so that the character had more natural balance. I also tried to focus on making the silhouette more interesting and clear by changing the shape of the shell, as that was something that was highlighted during the Character Design rotation. As well as changing the proportions, I began adding extra line work to the character as the original sketch had less personality and was quite dull ,when drawn out digitally.
In order to make the character easier to animate, I kept each part of him that would be able to move separate from each other. This gave me a larger range of movements I could achieve with the character when it got to the animating stage of the project.
I decided to keep the colour palette quite simple, consisting of mainly muted earth tones. This was intended to make the line work stand out against the shading, to maximise the expression on the character’s face.
Finalised Character Designs
After I had drawn the poses, I realised how the colours would need to completely change in some of them, as the lighting in the film would differ depending on the scene. Through using the Hard Light blending mode, that I practiced using during the Photographics rotation, I was able to change the colours of the character, without disrupting the original.
Background Designs
Once we had created the two characters, we split the workload again, where we each made a background. I focussed on the night-time outside scene. As tortoises live in relatively dry climates, I decided to create his home out of a large lone cactus in a desert like area. I thought this could add to the fairly depressing reality of the tortoise, as deserts are usually seen as places in media where characters tend to exist alone, usually dying that way, and the fact that he’s sitting in a spiky cactus only helped add to that feeling. Pairing this with a joyful twist, I felt could work quite well, as despite his home being a place one would realistically end up alone (as not many willingly enter the middle of the desert), he was able to join in with others up in another world above him, finding company at last.
Similar to before, I chose quite a limited colour palette, dark enough so that the Tortoise could stand out amongst it.
Animatic
After we created the three main backgrounds, we decided to think about motion, through creating a very simple animatic.
Animation Process
As we wanted to develop our skills in After Effects, that we enquired during the Motion Graphics rotation, we decided to complete this using that program. Due to the fact that I wasn’t too familiar with the software, it was quite a challenge for me. We focussed on mostly creating clear and simple motions in order to convey a particular feeling or action, as we thought this may work best given the 20 second time-limit, as well as the child-like inspiration.
Throughout this process, I experimented with the camera function in After Effects that I’d never used, so that my third scene had greater dimension. I created a path that the camera followed as the tortoise broke through his window.
The original animated scenes (Pre-Editing) I created (In order of Appearance)
Sound Process – Experimenting with sound effects / Music Composition
Our final step, after cutting the film down, was to create the sound, which at first we struggled with. We knew, firstly, that we wanted to create a soundtrack as we thought it’d add more feel to the story. After experimenting with a large variety of different apps, it became quite difficult, as sound wasn’t what we were best at. However, through using the program MuseScore, Akiva was able to compose a piece. In order to get the pacing right though, we had to keep playing both the cut-down video and the music at the same time, whilst Akiva composed, so that the melody was able to adjust to the emotions playing out in the scene at the right times.
After this, we tried to add more depth to the sound element of the film, through adding sound effects. Following on from that we found that these extra sounds took away from the music in the background, and in some instances made the film a bit too comical, so we decided to just use the music instead.